GFN News speaks with Filter’s Will Godfrey about reports of dramatic increases in vaping-related emergency department visits across several US states, especially among youth, and examines what those numbers truly represent beyond the headlines. The conversation highlights how headlines like “teen ER visits surge” can obscure distinctions between acute nicotine toxicity and far more subjective “e‑cigarette dependence” admissions that have driven much of the increase in reported cases. The discussion also explores how clinicians may mark visits as vape-related simply because a patient discloses vaping, even when it’s incidental to the medical issue, potentially inflating counts without reflecting actual vaping-caused harm.
Transcription:
00:04 - 00:39
[Joanna Junak]
Hello and welcome! I'm Joanna Junak and this is GFN News on GFN.tv. Today we'll be speaking with Will Guthrie of Filter about an apparent increase in vaping-related hospital visits in parts of the United States. Hi Will. Can you tell us what's been happening?
00:40 - 01:17
[Will Godfrey]
Hi Joanna. Various US states have reported data this year apparently showing dramatic increases in emergency department visits linked to vaping, particularly among youth. The media have duly jumped on this, producing headlines such as Vape crisis grows, teen ER visits surge in Kentucky, and vaping ED visits have gone up 109% in Virginia since 2020. US harm reduction advocate Skip Murray wrote about this for Filter, urging us to look behind the headlines at what the numbers do and don't represent.
01:19 - 01:22
[Joanna Junak]
And what are some of the things she pointed out?
01:23 - 03:21
[Will Godfrey]
The Kentucky data, for instance, shows that the small number of admissions for acute nicotine toxicity, typically involving accidental ingestion of far greater quantities than normal use of nicotine products entails, actually fell from 2018 to 2024, though youth cases rose to a total of 16. But what really surged was e-cigarette dependence-related admissions. As Skip wrote, that's a much more subjective reason, which could in part reflect parental concerns or adults' concerns about their own vaping based on media outcry. There are also indications that admissions are being recorded as vape-related just because the person disclosed that they vape, even if vaping was completely incidental to the reason for their hospital visit. Crucially, new coding to record reasons for hospital visits was created in the wake of the misnamed 2019 EVALI outbreak. It was adopted first by the WHO as vaping-related disorder, then by the CDC in the US, and then by various US states. Skip noted, this code is not specific to the substance vaped, meaning it could encompass nicotine or THC, CBD, or whatever. but it made it simple and easy for US clinicians to code cases as vaping related, regardless of whether vaping was the cause of the visit. Kentucky's epidemiologists explicitly state that they used an any mention approach to capture cases in their report. Moreover, studies and surveys show that clinicians harbor many misperceptions and biases against vaping. In other words, though the headline numbers are concerning at first glance, a closer look at what the data represent renders much of it meaningless as a real measure of vaping-related risks.
03:23 - 03:25
[Joanna Junak]
So what should we take away from this?
03:26 - 04:01
[Will Godfrey]
Well, as Skip wrote, our obligation is to interpret the numbers wisely. Policymakers should ask how much of this increase is due to coding and culture and how much is an accurate measure of disease burden. The danger, of course, is that outcry leads to yet more policies that cut access to vapes, which save lives by helping people quit smoking. Public health is best served by nuance, not alarmism, Skip concluded. Otherwise, we risk letting a coding change write the next chapter of our nation's nicotine policy.
04:03 - 04:18
[Joanna Junak]
Thank you all. That's all for today. Tune in next time here on GFN TV or on our podcast. You can also find transcriptions of each episode on the GFN TV website. Thanks for watching or listening. See you next time.